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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fanboy2000" data-source="post: 2887357" data-attributes="member: 19998">I kind of had to narrow my argument down to movies. I can go to IMDb and pull running times off a movies page, I don't know of a website I can pull the word count of individual books off of. If I did, you can bet I'd be comparing the length of Robert Jordan's books to Agatha Christie's books.My opinion is based on several personal observations. As always, your milage may vary.1. There are very few short story magazines anymore. Their absence in Science fiction is particularly noticeable. I only know of three off-hand. In addition, there was a thread here some time ago about people's opinions on short stories and the response was very much against them. The typical argument is that short stories don't allow for the character depth they want.2. In a similar thread on these boards, someone was asking for recommendations of fantasy books that weren't part of a series. I find it very interesting that stand alone fantasy books aren't self evident, a potential reader needs to search for them.3. I used to be on a Buffy Mailing list back in the Buffy's high school days. Every time the episode was a self-contained story, the reaction was "it's ok, for a monster of the week episode." The soap-opera story telling was much more appealing to Buffy's larger fan base.4. I've been watching a really bad sitcom lately called How I met Your Mother. (Hey, I said it was bad...) and rather than go with the traditional episodic format, I've noticed it's taking a more serialized approach. Indeed, half-hour sitcoms seem to be going away in favor of hour-long dramas and unscripted television.5. I hear more complaints about short form storytelling, for being short, than I do for long form. The complaints are lack of character development and complex plots. Long form storytelling seems to have an automatic legitimacy over short.It is funny. The truth is that I love short entertainment. I like longer fair too. I watched the LOTR movies and enjoyed all of them. I read the Harry Potter books and think they're great. But my heart is in episodic entertainment. Oz, Poirot, Holmes, and Asimov's shorts are the stories that I love. I pick up the book and I'm there. Everything you need to know about that world is there for you, self contained. I travel a lot and such books provide me with complete entertainment on the road or in the air. I would love to short form entertainment get the respect it deserves, but I see few defenders of the art.</blockquote>

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